Praying with the Grain: How your personality affects the way you pray

By Pablo Martinez

Why do so many struggle to pray? Dr Pablo Martinez, a medical doctor and psychotherapist, suggests that our basic personality type strongly affects how we pray, and what we pray about. Extroverts may struggle to develop a regular prayer life; introverts will be more likely to set time apart. Thinking types find prayer more satisfactory if accompanied by pen and paper; feeling types may long for intimacy with God; intuitive types tend to be innovators and visionaries, and may have a more mystical bent; sensation types often have a particular capacity for spontaneous prayer; and so on. The purpose of this book is to help us understand, and work with, our own spiritual path.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Release date: Mar 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9780857212580

Pablo Martinez

Trained as a medical doctor and psychiatrist, Pablo Martinez works at a Christian hospital in Barcelona. He has also developed a wide ministry as lecturer and counsellor. A former President of the Spanish GBU (the equivalent of the UCCF), he is still deeply involved with student ministry. He is a former Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Spanish Theological Seminary, and has spoken several times at Spring Harvest.

Book preview

I can’t think of a better person than Pablo Martinez to write a book on prayer and personality. Pablo understands and loves people – he also knows God and wants people to connect with Him. This book will help you understand yourself more and help you develop an intimate and powerful prayer life.

– Wendy Beech-Ward, Director of Spring Harvest

"Christians whose praying is difficult will find this book encouraging and enlightening. Pablo Martinez emphasises the way that how we pray is very much influenced by our personality – and we are all different. There are ‘different prayers for different people’.

As a struggling, failing but believing Christian and as a psychiatrist practising for many years I would highly commend this short but influential work.

– Professor Andrew Sims, former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Knowing who we are greatly influences how we relate to God and to one another, and this book provides us with a fresh understanding of these dynamics, especially as they relate to prayer. This is not guilt-inducing but deeply liberating. Pablo Martinez demonstrates how prayer should be God-centred and God-honouring, but also health-giving and restorative. It is a wonderfully motivating book and I warmly commend it.

– Jonathan Lamb, Director, Langham Preaching, and Chairman, Keswick Ministries

Thoughtful, helpful and encouraging. It helps us understand both who we are talking with and why some patterns and models of prayer will come more naturally than others.

– Michael Ramsden, European Director, RZIM Zacharias Trust

Profoundly simple, this book helped me understand myself and others, but, more importantly, helped me to pray.

– Hugh Palmer, Rector of All Souls, Langham Place, London

An earlier version of this material appeared under the title Prayer Life.

PRAYING WITH THE GRAIN

How your personality affects the way you pray

PABLO MARTÍNEZ

Copyright © 2001, 2012 by Pablo Martínez.

The right of Pablo Martínez to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in the UK in 2001 by Spring Harvest Publishing Division and Paternoster Lifestyle, under the title Prayer Life.

This edition published in 2012 by Monarch Books (a publishing imprint of Lion Hudson plc) and by Elevation (a publishing imprint of the Memralife Group): Lion Hudson plc, Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR

Tel: [phone]; Fax [phone]; email [e-mail]; www.lionhudson.com

Memralife Group, 14 Horsted Square, Uckfield, East Sussex TN22 1QG

Tel: [phone]; Fax [phone]; www.elevationmusic.com

ISBN 978 0 85721 152 1 (print)

ISBN 978 0 85721 257 3 (Kindle)

ISBN 978 0 85721 258 0 (epub)

ISBN 978 0 85721 259 7 (PDF)

Distributed by:

UK: Marston Book Services, PO Box 269, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4YN

USA: Kregel Publications, PO Box 2607, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49501

Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan and Hodder & Stoughton Limited.

All rights reserved. The ‘NIV’ and ‘New International Version’ trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790.

British Library Cataloguing Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Corbis.

Contents

Cover

Praise

Title Page

Copyright

About the Author

Foreword by John Stott

Introduction to the First Edition

Introduction to the Revised Edition

Part 1: The Psychology of Prayer

1. Different Prayers for Different People

Prayer in relation to temperament

2. Overcoming Difficulties

Emotional problems and prayer

3. The Therapeutic Value of Prayer

Prayer – a love relationship

Questions and Answers

The most frequently asked questions on prayer

Part 2: The Apologetics of Prayer

4. Prayer: Psychological Illusion?

A psychiatrist’s viewpoint

5. Are All Prayers Alike?

Christian prayer and Eastern meditation

Notes

Pablo Martínez

Dr Pablo Martínez is a medical doctor and psychiatrist working currently at a private practice in Barcelona. He has also developed a wide ministry as a lecturer, counsellor, and itinerant speaker. He has been a plenary Bible teacher in more than thirty countries in Europe and both North and South America. He has served as President of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance (1999–2009) and for seven years was Professor of Pastoral Psychology at the Spanish Theological Seminary. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA), also serving as one of the organization’s vice-presidents.

He was one of the members of the founding council of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (1982) and has been a regular speaker at Word Alive and Spring Harvest.

He developed his pastoral gifts serving as an elder in his local church for almost twenty-five years. He is currently chairman of the European Christian Counsellors Network, a body connected to the European Leadership Forum, where Dr Martínez serves as a member of the steering committee. He is also a member of the Sociopolitical Commission of the European Evangelical Alliance.

He has authored two other books: Tracing the Rainbow: Walking Through Loss and Bereavement (Authentic Media, 2004), and A Thorn in the Flesh: Finding strength and hope amid suffering (Inter-Varsity Press, England, 2007).

Pablo is married to Marta, who is also a medical doctor. He enjoys bird-watching and reading.

Foreword

I have enjoyed the friendship of Pablo Martínez for more than twenty years and am grateful for the opportunity to commend this book to a wide readership.

It is not difficult to pinpoint its special value. Here is a psychiatrist who is committed to Christ, knows his Bible, rejoices in Christ’s cross, has a lively sympathy for struggling Christians and has much wisdom born of rich pastoral experience. These ingredients together make a strong mixture!

Dr Martínez accepts the Jungian distinction between extroverts and introverts, and his classification of four main psychological types. He is surely right to insist that our temperament is a genetic endowment, and that the new birth does not change it, although grace helps us to live with it and the Holy Spirit changes us into the likeness of Christ. He urges us to discover who we are, and to accept and respect each other in the rich diversity of the human family. As we study his thorough portraiture of different psychological types, we soon recognize ourselves and our friends.

Next he comes to the practice of prayer and how our prayers are affected by our temperament and personality. There are different styles of prayer which suit different kinds of people; he is an enemy of all stereotypes. He also faces honestly some of the problems which Christians experience, and makes practical suggestions for solving them. He urges us to persevere, because of the therapeutic value of prayer.

But our author is also familiar with the contours of contemporary thought and knows about the current influences which are hostile to prayer. In his last two chapters he tackles these. He develops a robust defence both of the authenticity of Christian prayer, against the slander that it is mere autosuggestion, and of the uniqueness of Christian prayer, against the claim that it is no different from Eastern meditation.

Pablo Martínez has written a profound, practical and personal book in which the skill of the psychiatrist and the gentleness of the pastor are combined. His overall aim is to encourage prayer without guilt; he wants us to discover that prayer is more a pleasure than a burden. I warmly commend this English edition. I cannot imagine any reader failing to be helped by it, as I have been myself.

John Stott

London, September 2001

Introduction to the First Edition

As I decided to write about how our personalities and characters affect our prayer lives, three purposes were in my mind. First, to help the ordinary Christian who is struggling unnecessarily with their own prayer life and spirituality. Many Christians believe their struggles are sinful, not understanding that very often they are the result of their own emotional make-up. I would like my readers to think of prayer without guilt, because too often we associate the two. Prayer should not be just one more burden in life, but a pleasure to enjoy.

My second purpose was to help Christians develop their prayer lives to their full potential, while understanding how these are affected by their temperaments and personalities. How do they affect our praying – and what can we do about it? How can I use the benefits and counteract the drawbacks of my character in prayer? I would like to promote mutual acceptance in our relationships, between individual Christians and between churches, as a result of grasping the basic principle that variety is a treasure that enriches, not an obstacle that bothers.

Third, I wanted to make clear the great therapeutic value of prayer. Prayer is a powerful tool to bring emotional healing into our lives. It is in prayer that we encounter, face to face, the supreme Physician, our Lord Jesus Christ, who wants to give us life to the full (John 10:10).

The second part (Chapters 4 and 5) is on the apologetics of prayer. Its purpose is to equip the reader with reasons for defending the relevance and uniqueness of Christian prayer in a postmodern society. This book is addressed to the evangelical community in general, rather than to the professional group of Christian psychologists and psychiatrists. For this reason, I have tried to avoid technical detail and to be very practical. The book has been forged mainly through direct contact with ordinary Christians, who answered questionnaires or accepted interviews, thus making an invaluable personal contribution.

Some words of gratitude are necessary here because this book is the result of many efforts. Ali Hull has been not only a very efficient editor, but a partner whose comments and suggestions have greatly enriched the book. Bob Horn was the person who first introduced me to Word Alive/Spring Harvest, and consequently opened the doors to the series of lectures which were the basis for the book. My wife, Marta, has given me essential help in the practicalities of using a computer! Finally, I want to thank my parents from whom I learned that prayer, the spinal cord of our Christian life, is a pleasure to enjoy, a source of peace and blessing, much more than a burden. If I manage to help my readers to learn this same principle, the book will have accomplished its purpose.

Introduction to the Revised Edition

I count it as a privilege to write some words of introduction to this totally revised and updated edition. It is now ten years since it was first published in English. During these years the book had a very warm welcome from readers. Not only were the numbers encouraging – it was reprinted several times and has been translated into thirteen languages – but I particularly appreciated the feedback from many brothers and sisters, who confirmed that the work met a need. Many have shared how they discovered through it that prayer can be more a pleasure than a burden. If it is true that books are to the author like children to parents, I can say that this child has been a constant source of joy to me!

As I was working on the revision and updating, I tried to keep in mind the many helpful comments I received from readers during these years. If the book is now enriched, as I hope it is, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to its readers.

I am grateful to Monarch Books at Lion Hudson, and to Tony Collins in particular, for their interest in publishing this revised version of the work. In a time when the pace of life continues to increase, and even books have a short lifespan, my desire and heartfelt prayer is that God may continue to use this book for the building up of his church in the English-speaking world.

Part 1

The Psychology of Prayer

CHAPTER 1

Different Prayers for Different People

Prayer in relation to temperament

Why do I find it difficult to pray?

Why do some Christians seem to have a natural ease when it comes to praying?

Why do I feel so hypocritical when I pray?

Why do I find it hard to feel the presence of God when I pray?

Is my problem a lack of faith?

These frequently heard questions reflect an important reality: our prayers are affected not only by spiritual conditions but by other things as well. Three factors have a powerful effect on our prayer lives. Two of them have a permanent, continuous influence: our temperament and our personality. They are closely linked to our character, to what we are like as people. The third factor, the circumstances of the moment, depends on temporary phenomena: the effects only last for a certain length of time.

In the chapters that follow, I want to analyse the way in which these factors affect our prayer life on two levels: in the course of prayer, which we might call the flow or the dynamics of prayer, and in the content of prayer. In other words, our temperament, our personality and our circumstances at a given moment affect how we pray and what we pray.

This does not mean that our prayer life is completely at the mercy of emotional and circumstantial factors. This view, that of psychological determinism, is a serious mistake that has been made by several different schools of psychology. Both the orthodox psychoanalysis of Freud and Skinner’s behaviourism maintain that the mind regulates our behaviour and our whole lives so strongly that it leaves very little scope for other influences. We do believe, as Christians, that prayer is performed under the influence of the Holy Spirit and he assumes a central role throughout the entire course of prayer.

In analysing the psychological factors of prayer, I do not want to minimize the role of the One who intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express (Romans 8:26b), and so reduce it to that of an extra. Nothing could be further from my intention. But it would also be a mistake to ignore the extraordinary influence that our psychological make-up has on our spiritual life in general and on our prayer life in particular.

Why do our temperament, our personality and our circumstances affect us so much? The answer is that a human being is a unity, which